Archive

In Their Own Words

Narrators are all well and good, but there’s nothing better than getting the story straight from the mouths of those who lived it. In this collection of oral histories, you’ll learn the unmediated truth of how the Internet was born, how The Simpsons came to be, how MTV conquered America’s youth, and more.

By the time Michael Jackson died, his unparalleled fame and dark troubles had locked him into a fragile shell. With her interviews and notes from the early chapters of the pop king’s career, Lisa Robinson resurrects the innocent, ebullient, exploring youth as he confided his struggle to move beyond his family and take control of his art. Photographs by Annie Leibovitz, from her 1989 V.F. shoot with a then 31-year-old Jackson.

In many ways, the men who made The Godfather—director Francis Ford Coppola, producer Al Ruddy, Paramount executives Robert Evans and Peter Bart, and Gulf & Western boss Charles Bluhdorn—were as ruthless as the gangsters in Mario Puzo’s blockbuster. After violent disputes over the casting of Marlon Brando and Al Pacino, they tangled with the real-life Mob, which didn’t want the movie made at all. The clash of Hollywood sharks, Mafia kingpins, and cinematic geniuses shaped a Hollywood masterpiece.

The threat of 9/11 ignored. The threat of Iraq hyped and manipulated. Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. Hurricane Katrina. The shredding of civil liberties. The rise of Iran. Global warming. Economic disaster. How did one two-term presidency go so wrong? A sweeping draft of history—distilled from scores of interviews—offers fresh insight into the roles of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and other key players.

After half a century, and several shelves of books about the revolutionary music label, Motown’s story is still obscured by rumors and misconceptions. Founder Berry Gordy Jr. joins a groundbreaking chorus—Smokey Robinson, Martha Reeves, Lionel Richie, Stevie Wonder, Suzanne de Passe, and other legends—to give an oral history of the Detroit hitmaking machine and the cultural and racial breakthroughs it inspired.

Fifty years ago, the U.S. military set up the Advanced Research Projects Agency. It would become the cradle of connectivity, spawning the era of Google and YouTube, of Amazon and Facebook, of the Drudge Report and the Obama campaign. Here, the people who made it happen tell the story.

A cartoon family whacked America’s funny bone in 1989, eventually becoming the longest-running TV comedy ever. Not everyone involved—including the writers, the voices, and Rupert Murdoch—agrees on what has made it a pop phenomenon.

A neon-lit promise of excitement on Tribeca’s then dark streets, the Odeon was the restaurant that defined New York’s 80s: a retro haven for the likes of Warhol and Basquiat, De Niro and Belushi, with a cocaine-fueled scene captured in Bright Lights, Big City. Inspired by the Odeon’s 25th anniversary, staffers and such habitués as Tom Wolfe, Lorne Michaels, and Jay McInerney share their table-hopping, fistfighting memories.

Anonymous tips, political agendas, raging lawyers, outrageous sex stories—so goes life at “Page Six,” the New York Post gossip column Rupert Murdoch ordered up in 1977. Listening to staffers, sources, and subjects, an alumnus chronicles the feuds, scoops, and characters that have made the column as powerful as the boldfaced names it covers.

By the time the hijackers made their way into the U.S., memos, photographs, and intercepts had sounded alarms inside the C.I.A., White House, F.B.I., and European intelligence services. Ned Zeman, David Wise, David Rose, and Bryan Burrough show how the hideous “Planes Operation” took shape as the C.I.A.’s bin Laden point man, Mike Scheuer, counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, the F.B.I.’s John MacGaffin, and others fought—yet couldn’t work together—to prevent it.

The Path to War, by Bryan Burrough, Evgenia Peretz, David Rose, and David Wise (May 2004)

Amid the smoking wreckage of September 11, 2001, the Bush administration took its policy goal of regime change in Iraq and began an 18-month campaign marked by miscalculation, bullying, and deception that would tarnish its credibility and turn the world’s sympathy for the U.S. into fear and mistrust. Bryan Burrough, Evgenia Peretz, David Rose, and David Wise unfold the saga of stunning blunders, desperate maneuvers, and dangerous arrogance, as seen by White House, Pentagon, C.I.A., and other insiders.

More than a quarter-century after Saturday Night Live premiered on NBC, its alumni have ascended to the pantheon of American comedy. In an excerpt from Live from New York, Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller hear from cast members, producer Lorne Michaels, and celebrity hosts about the feuds, the love affairs, the drugs, and the tragic deaths.

With hundreds of millions of viewers worldwide, MTV is a cultural phenomenon, a force that has changed the worlds of fashion, movies, and music itself. But in 1981, when a small band of men and women started the first 24-hour music channel, no one was interested—except the kids.